be under the cat’s paw—live under the control of some domineering person:
- She might claim adulthood in every sense of the word…. She would no longer be under the cat’s paw of her stepmother.
make a cat’s paw of someone—make another person a tool or instrument to accomplish one’s own purpose:
- She simply made a cat’s-paw of you, Basil. I can see it now, darling, I did not then.